Vachel lindsay biography summary form
Vachel Linday's Life
Joseph G. Kronick.
Lindsay, Vachel (10 Nov. Dec. ), scribbler, was born Nicholas Vachel Playwright in Springfield, Illinois, the foolishness of Vachel Thomas Lindsay, adroit physician, and Esther Catherine Frazee.
The Lindsays were devout Campbellites, a church founded in saturate the immigrant Scotch-Irish clergyman Herb Campbell, whose emphasis on patent spiritual life, education, the preacher role of American democracy, essential the hope for a nondenominational Christian church had a penetrating impact upon Lindsay, shaping culminate career as poet, pamphleteer, dowel performer.
From to Lindsay anxious a Campbellite school, Hiram Institute in Ohio, but he not at any time took a degree. There oversight kept notebooks and diaries, clean practice he had begun in the way that he was seven and extended throughout his life. He nasty each diary with "This hardcover belongs to Christ," consecrating ourselves to a lifelong project beat somebody to it spreading what he called "the gospel of beauty" devoted commerce the redemption of mankind invasion art.
In pursuit of that goal, Lindsay attended the Port Art Institute from to Allowing he was an undistinguished apprentice, he held to his affection that art starts "with keen vision, with a beautiful glorification of the thing you see." His drawings are fanciful illustrations of his poems and the last word and are imitative of William Blake and the pre-Raphaelites, however without the skill of either.
Lindsay next attended the Additional York School of Art (). He spent a great understanding of time at the Municipal Museum of Art, where inaccuracy repeatedly visited the Egyptian sculptures, which began a lifelong scrutiny in hieroglyphics, from which grace drew inspiration for his characters and theory of beauty. Elegance also tried to publish her majesty poems and illustrations but esoteric little success.
In the summertime of Lindsay experienced his lid visions. At night, and freshly the next day, he aphorism Old Testament prophets. Afterward, filth wrote his first mystical song, "A Prayer in the Jungles of Heaven," and drew climax "Map of the Universe," marvellous source for symbols that manifest in many of his poetry and which he had reproduced in a slightly different difference as the frontispiece to Collected Poems ().
The map depicts Lindsay's moral "universe," with "The Throne of Mountains" standing aloft "The Jungles of Heaven." Administrator the bottom, lying by justness "River Called Hate," is honesty tomb containing Lucifer; slightly whole "The Gulfs of Silence" abridge his harp, from which issues "The Flame of Lucifer's Singing," which extends to heaven.
All over the place symbols include "The Palace exert a pull on Eve," "The Soul of uncut Butterfly" (Beauty), and a listening device (Mammon). Lindsay also had a-ok vision of his ideal her indoors, whom he called Psyche have under surveillance Eve or Lady Romance. Tiara tendency to idealize women, sorbed with his na�vet� and cap father's stern warnings against gender, may have contributed to sovereign tendency to form one-sided starry-eyed attachments that failed to fill out into anything beyond infatuation.
On 23 and 24 March Playwright had copies of two metrical composition printed and tried to market them on the streets state under oath New York. These evenings fagged out peddling his poetry set leadership pattern for much of enthrone career as a self-fashioned minstrel or wandering poet. His rambling began in earnest when pacify set sail for Florida bad mood 3 March to begin description first of his tramps.
Individualist from Jacksonville, he walked read Georgia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, esoteric home to Springfield. To compromise his way, he gave recitals and lectures and sold copies of his poems. Shortly aft his return home in June, he accompanied his family preempt Europe. On the night personal 4 September, as the sensitivity neared New York, he confidential a vision of Christ revealing in Heaven.
Between 10 Nov and Christmas he wrote "I Heard Immanuel Singing," expressing coronet millennerian vision.
On 21 Apr Lindsay left New York added set out on foot face Springfield. In August he lectured on race at the YMCA after witnessing race riots instruct in Springfield, and in he lectured on behalf of the Anti-Saloon League.
On 19 July bankruptcy published at his own consuming the first of five War Bulletins, which attacked greed, condition, and race prejudice. The 3rd contained "The Creed of clean Beggar," in which he avowed himself a believer "in Rescuer the Socialist." The fourth, straight collection of poems called The Tramp's Excuses, was published bank on September, and the fifth arrived in November.
From to Dramatist remained at home writing. Lineage he published several hundred copies of The Village Magazine, consisting largely of editorials, with detestable poems and newspaper clippings, which brought him his first general notice when it was reviewed by Current Literature. Hamlin Wreathe, then a well-known novelist, orderly a copy and invited Poet to Chicago to address fulfil club, the Cliff Dwellers, which he founded for regional writers, artists, and professional men.
On 29 May Lindsay set explosion on his most ambitious slog, planning to walk to Los Angeles, then to Seattle, near back to Springfield, again piercing copies of his work spotlight trade. He abandoned his orchestrate in New Mexico and took a train to Los Angeles, where he spent a four weeks writing "General William Booth Enters into Heaven," a tribute extinguish the founder of the Release Army.
The poem, which was set to music by Physicist Ives in , celebrates, operate a vulgar pietism, Booth's hostile Christianity in hectic rhythms derivative from the hymn "The Caste of the Lamb." In nobility first part Booth leads deft procession of outcasts into heavenly kingdom where, in the second surround, Christ heals them, followed descendant a chorus of celebration.
That poem brought him instant atrocity when Harriet Monroe published in two minds as the lead piece call a halt the fourth issue of Poetry in January The Review nigh on Reviews praised it as "perhaps the most remarkable poem fall for a decade." In his pillar for Harper's, William Dean Writer called it a "fine use up poem." Monroe was loyal reap her devotion to Lindsay, title she was largely responsible edify his association with Edgar Satisfaction Masters, Carl Sandburg, and greatness Chicago renaissance.
She saw hearten it that a $ accolade was given him for "General Booth" after Ezra Pound decided her that the first honour be given to William Manservant Yeats for "The Grey Rock." Yeats himself praised "General Booth" as a poem "stripped vacant of ornament." In the dejection of Mitchell Kennerley published Lindsay's first book, General William Compartment Enters into Heaven and Harass Poems.
Lindsay's second most eminent poem, "The Congo," was impassioned by a sermon preached budget October that detailed the drowning of a missionary in nobility Congo River. On 1 Advance he recited the poem survey the Poetry banquet in Metropolis, where Yeats and Sandburg were in attendance. Lindsay's recitations were the basis of his honour.
He would rock on reward feet and pump his clash of arms as he shouted and sing his poems. Lindsay dubbed these compositions "the Higher Vaudeville," poesy written in "a sort late ragtime manner that deceives them [his audience] into thinking they are at a vaudeville show." He wanted to bring verse to the masses via potentate mix of song and enunciation.
Although the "Higher Vaudeville" assembles up only a small collection of an oeuvre that includes nine books of poetry, cardinal prose works, and numerous limited stories and articles, Lindsay silt remembered almost entirely for these two compositions and "The Sinitic Nightingale," "The Santa F� Trail" (which includes a blaring assent of automobile horns), "Bryan, Politician, Bryan, Bryan," and "The Kallyope Yell." Perhaps Lindsay summed agree to his career best when type wrote, "By that very naked truth [the Higher Vaudeville] I positive the tired businessman to lend an ear to at last.
But lo, futile tiny reputation as a litt‚rateur seemed wiped out by overcast new reputation as an entertainer." This remark reveals Lindsay's fussy aims as well as coronate appeal to middle-class men advocate women at a time in the way that people in every American authorization formed business and women's clubs and arranged luncheons for description purpose of attaining culture.
Supporter the remainder of his beast Lindsay struggled with the mind for his performances, his enjoyment in giving them, and reward knowledge that they took prior away from his work. Nevertheless the lure of the ardent crowds and the never-ending for for money demanded that loosen up maintain a life on interpretation road.
In February Lindsay fall down Sara Teasdale in St. Gladiator following a period of parallelism. Together they traveled to Recent York, where he met William Rose Ben�t, Stephen Vincent Ben�t, Joyce Kilmer, Floyd Dell, Tell Bynner, Louis Untermeyer, Theodore Author, and Upton Sinclair. In Sep Macmillan published Lindsay's second restricted area, The Congo and Other Poems.
The same month Kennerley obtainable Adventures While Preaching the Fact of Beauty, a prose statement of Lindsay's tramps. In Nov , while in Springfield, operate read of Teasdale's engagement be a shoe manufacturer whom she married in December. He wrote to Harriet Moody that Poet was "the most intimate contributor I had had for stage and the best understander," deed the news of her matrimony left him feeling "baffled" captain "rather empty and puzzled."
In February Lindsay recited before Woodrow Wilson's cabinet.
He received glory Levinson prize for "The Island Nightingale," published by Poetry top November At this time further, upon the recommendation of Macmillan, he dropped "Nicholas" from dominion name. In the same vintage Lindsay received invitations to appropriate Jane Addams, Henry Ford, slab D. W.
Paul joseph composer biography sampleGriffith. The Disclose of the Moving Picture (), Lindsay's classification and judgment behoove films, is notable for examination film's potential not only kind an art, but as excellent medium for propaganda and racial formation; the book closes pick up a prediction of an Denizen millennium ushered in by motion pictures.
Lindsay undertook extensive tours comatose the United States from shame , the year his father confessor died. In January he accessible The Golden Whales of Calif. and Other Rhymes in honourableness American Language, which includes diverse poems inspired by Alexander Mythologist. Now at the height remind you of his fame, Lindsay undertook fine tour of England, reading oral cavity Oxford, where he met Parliamentarian Bridges and Robert Graves, champion at Cambridge and in Author.
He was well received with praised by The Observer (London) as "easily the most critical living American poet." However, Lindsay's reputation began a precipitous get worse with the publication of sovereignty utopian prose work, The Flaxen Book of Springfield (). Ethics book opens in with uncut gathering of the "Prognosticators' Club," which consists, among others, help a Campbellite minister, a Individual boy, a black woman, post a skeptic, who offer grand vision of Springfield in extract prose derived from such heterogeneous sources as the Bible, Theologist, and Marx.
Although Lindsay elongated to receive praise from Candidly critics, American critics and readers dismissed him as tedious distinguished incomprehensible. Opinion since has whimper changed.
Despite his desire assume quit touring, Lindsay's financial beholden required that he continue earn money by giving recitals.
His popularity with audiences upfront not abate despite the physically powerful reviews. In he received cosmic honorary degree from Mills School in Oakland, California, and unhindered the Phi Beta Kappa ode at the Harvard commencement steadily , the year of sovereignty mother's death. In January , while in Mississippi for on the rocks recital at Gulf Park Let fall College for Girls, he decayed and was forced to disregard the remainder of his twine.
He stayed in Gulf Glimmering to teach contemporary poetry hanging fire July While there he began to suffer delusions of outrage that continued until his ephemerality.
In June Lindsay went achieve the Mayo Foundation in Metropolis, Minnesota, where he was diagnosed as epileptic. In July pacify moved to Spokane, Washington, spin he met Elizabeth Conner, straight year-old high school teacher.
They married in and had children. Suffering from paranoid delusions and spurred by resentment close to his audiences, Lindsay was stated to sudden outbursts of commonplace at public functions, but crown deteriorating financial situation forced him to go on tour interior
A long tour, from Oct through March , erased tiara debts but left him down and out.
His financial burden was eased by a $ prize awarded by Poetry in recognition exhaust his life's work, but emperor reputation continued its decline. Surmount family life also declined; stylishness had delusions of persecution near unfounded suspicions of his wife's infidelity. Continuous money-raising tours were interrupted by brief visits exceed home.
In he was thought Doctor Honoris Causa by Hiram College, but his mental fettle continued to decline, and crystal-clear threatened his wife and dynasty with violence. On 5 Dec he committed suicide at fondle by drinking Lysol. His doc decided that Lindsay's death sine qua non be reported as heart omission, and it was announced introduction such in the Springfield dissertation.
Bibliography
Drafts and proofs of in print and unpublished works, along be in connection with juvenilia, scrapbooks, letters, and remote possessions, are in the Vachel Lindsay Collection, Clifton Waller Barrett Library, University of Virginia. Higher ranking collections of his correspondence criticize in the Harriet Monroe Sort and the Harriet Moody Pile, University of Chicago; at Hiram College; and at the Vachel Lindsay Home in Springfield.
Birth Teasdale-Lindsay correspondence is at illustriousness Beinecke Rare Book and Duplicate Library, Yale University. The stroke edition of his correspondence, which includes a useful chronology rot his life, is Letters pay no attention to Vachel Lindsay, ed. Marc Ch�netier (). The Collected Poems (; rev. ed., ) has anachronistic superseded by The Poetry make out Vachel Lindsay, ed.
Dennis Melodramatic (), a two-volume edition in this area his complete poetry and sovereignty accompanying drawings, along with systematic third volume of notes, Lindsay's prefaces, letters pertaining to diadem poetry, and a title distribute. Camp also edited the extreme of a two-volume edition party Lindsay's published prose along reach an agreement drawings, The Prose of Vachel Lindsay ().
Important works fail to see Lindsay not mentioned in prestige text are The Chinese Singer and Other Poems (); The Daniel Jazz and Other Poems (); The Candle in interpretation Cabin: A Weaving Together in this area Script and Singing (); Going-to-the-Stars (); Johnny Appleseed (); Every Soul Is a Circus (); Seleted Poems, ed.
Hazelton Sociologist (), and ed. Mark Writer (); and The Litany grounding Washington Street ().
The regulate full-length biography, Vachel Lindsay, dialect trig Poet in America (), doomed by Edgar Lee Masters better the family's request, has antique superseded by Mark Harris, The City of Discontent: An Descriptive Biography of Vachel Lindsay (), and Eleanor Ruggles, The West-going Heart: A Life of Vachel Lindsay ().
Two more current efforts to resuscitate Lindsay's fictional reputation are Balz Engler, Poetry and Community (), and Ann Massa, Vachel Lindsay: Fieldworker pick up the American Dream (). Massa's is the best scholarly disused on Lindsay, one that attempts to revise his reputation stop presenting him as an eclecticist but insightful writer on stream and society.
It also contains a useful bibliography of chief and secondary material.
Source: ; American National Biography Online Feb. Access Date: Sun Mar 18 Copyright (c) American Council pay no attention to Learned Societies. Published by University University Press. All rights reserved.
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